The court held, "that claims for occupational disease which manifests outside of the 300-week period prescribed by the Act do not fall within the purview of the Act, and, therefore, that the exclusivity provision of Section 303(a) does not apply to preclude an employee from filing a common law claim against an employer."
Tooley v AK Steel Corporation
No. 21 WAO 2011, No. 22 WAP 20111, No. 23 WAP 2011
2013 Pa. LEXIS 2816
Decided: November 22, 2013
Ed Note: My thanks to Judge David B. Torrey for sharing this decision. Note the reference in the Dissenting Opinion of Mr. Justice Saylor:
"8 David B. Torrey & Andrew E. Greenberg, Pennsylvania
Workers' Compensation Law & Practice §14.10 (3d ed. 2011) (expressing that Section 301(c)(2)'s time
limitation constitutes a "substantive prerequisite to ascertainment of the compensability," intended
to "establish, via arbitrary time basis, some outside limit to govern the potential [*64] liability of the
employer"). Accordingly, I would hold that the 300-week limitation in Section 301(c)(2) has no effect on
whether a worker's occupational disease comes within the WCA's coverage. As such, the exclusivity
mandate appearing in Section 303(a) of the statute applies, in my view, to preclude Plaintiffs from
maintaining a negligence-based lawsuit against Employers.16"
….
Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman 1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.
